Heroic whistle-blower to some, anti-american espionage agent to others; Edward Snowden raised a lot of controversy when he leaked confidential information about questionable government activity to the public.
I don't however, believe we should focus entirely on prosecuting Snowden in this scandal, the second guilty agent is our own governments. So far as I understand, Snowden exposed that the government was gathering data about phone communications, such as when certain calls were placed and from what numbers.
This breach of privacy I don't believe is very severe when compared to the wiretaps during the Busch administration, or even when compared to the unregulated intake of information our government currently has access to in our online communications. I believe there's no reason the government shouldn't be able to monitor phone calls, especially if that is essential to stopping acts of terrorism or protecting citizens.
But there's a key difference between the government's access to our online interactions and their access to our phone records. We had no knowledge that they could access our phone knowledge. This, as far as I am concerned, is the actual crime. I don't understand why it was necessary for the government to try and hide this function of their espionage service, other than protecting the president's public image of course, but by keeping their phone-record surveillance a secret, they turned it from a form of protecting the American people into a secret weapon that could 'potentially' be used against us.
I believe Snowden deserves a meddle for exposing this furtiveness.
After all, we are a democratic nation, so how can we decide when to sacrifice privacy for protection when the majority of us aren't privy to the sacrifice.
No comments:
Post a Comment